China

Covington’s offices in Beijing and Shanghai are fully-integrated components of the firm’s global capabilities. For our global clients entering or operating in China, the offices provide a breadth of corporate, investigatory, government affairs and regulatory capabilities and experience unmatched by our peer firms. For our Chinese companies and investors, the offices manage the broader firm’s legal and strategic advisory services for all stages of the globalization process—outbound investment transactions, navigating commercial and regulatory challenges to overseas operations, and resolving commercial, intellectual property and other foreign disputes.

Our Beijing and Shanghai teams are built on a strong foundation of Chinese nationals trained both in the United States and China as well as lawyers and advisors from the United States with deep China experience. The managing partner of our Beijing office, Tim Stratford, is a member of the first generation of U.S. lawyers that came to China in the early 1980s and the most senior former U.S. trade official in the business community in China. The vast majority of our professionals in China are native speakers or fluent in Mandarin, and many of them speak Cantonese, Shanghainese, and other Chinese dialects.

Our capabilities in China include:

• Antitrust and Competition
• Anti-corruption and FCPA
• Corporate
• Communications and Media
• Employment
• Government Affairs
• IT and Licensing Transactions
• Intellectual Property Disputes
• International Arbitration
• International Trade and WTO
• Life Sciences Regulatory and Transactions
• Privacy and Data Security
• Public Policy
• Trade Controls
• U.S.-bound Investment and CFIUS Reviews

We advise global clients from a range of industries, with a particular focus on energy and natural resources, infrastructure, life sciences, telecommunications, and IT, media and Technology.